S130 SDS v2.0: BLE peripheral connection processor usage patterns

This section describes the processor availability and interrupt processing time for the SoftDevice in a peripheral connection event.

Figure 1. Peripheral connection events

In a peripheral connection event, the pattern of SoftDevice processing activity at interrupt priority level 0 is typically as follows:

First, there is an interrupt (Radio prepare) that sets up and prepares the software and hardware for the connection event.
Then there is a short interrupt when the radio starts listening for the first packet.
When the reception is finished, there is Radio processing that processes the received packet and switches the radio to transmission.
When the transmission is finished, there is either a Radio processing including a switch back to reception and possibly a new transmission after that, or the event ends with post processing.
After the radio and post processings in priority level 0, the SoftDevice processes any received data packets, executes any GATT, ATT or SMP operations and generates events to the application as required in priority level 2. The interrupt at this priority level is therefore highly variable based on the stack operations executed.

SoftDevice processing activity in the different priority levels during peripheral connection events is outlined in Table 1. The typical case is seen when sending GATT write commands writing 20 bytes. The max case can be seen when sending and receiving maximum length packets and at the same time initiating encryption, while having a maximum number of connections and utilizing the Radio Timeslot API and Flash memory API at the same time.

Table 1. Processor usage when connected
Parameter	Description	Min	Typical	Max
t_{ISR(0),RadioPrepare}	Processing preparing the radio for a connection event.		105 μs	130 μs
t_{ISR(0),RadioStart}	Processing when starting the connection event.		44 μs	50 μs
t_{ISR(0),RadioProcessing}	Processing after sending or receiving a packet.		80 μs	110 μs
t_{ISR(0),PostProcessing}	Processing at the end of a connection event.		255 μs	775 μs
t_nISR(0)	Distance between interrupts during a connection event.	30 μs	> 160 μs
t_ISR(2)	Priority level 2 interrupt after a packet is sent or received.		160 μs

From the table, we can calculate a typical processing time for a peripheral connection event where one packet is sent and received to be

t_{ISR(0),RadioPrepare} + t_{ISR(0),RadioStart} + t_{ISR(0),RadioProcessing} + t_{ISR(0),PostProcessing} + 2 * t_ISR(2) = 804 μs

which means that typically more than 99% of the processor time is available to the application when one peripheral link is established and one packet is sent in each direction with a 100 ms connection interval.